Padova and the Landscape: Alternative Futures for the Roncajette Park and the Industrial Zone

Padova and the Landscape: Alternative Futures for the Roncajette Park and the Industrial Zone

Padova and the Landscape: Alternative Futures for the Roncajette Park and the Industrial Zone
Author: Carl Steinitz
Harvard Graduate School of Design, 2005

This study is of the future of the Parco Roncajette, the industrial zone ZIP, and the landscape of the eastern part of the region of Padova. It is the product of collaborative student work at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. The class was taught by Professor Carl Steinitz with the assistance of Juan carlos Vargas-Moreno and Laura Ciprani. We express our gratitude to the many persons who met and worked with us over the course of the study.

This presentation has some distinct limitations. It is not, and cannot be, as finely attuned to the complex realities of the Padovan region as are its many and diverse residents and their several levels of government. The students' work is not based on deep personal knowledge. Rather it was accomplished from the perspective of "some familiarity" based on a site visit, interviews, published materials, and consultation with knowledgeable persons. The study takes a longer-term and a mor physical planning and design-orientated approach rather than focusing on the complexities of cost-benefit assessment, institutional change, or implementation. While recognizing its limitations, the study may have the advantages of distance and of taking a "fresh look" at issues and prospects for the Parco Roncajette and its context region.

The work is overtly speculative. it is important to emphasize that this type of study does not aim to predict the future of the region, nor to product an immediately feasible master plan. The policies and proposals that the students have developed are investigations of possible futures, given the forces and factors in motion today. Their value is to allow one to visualize the future for a moment, and perhaps to decide whether it is the future that is wanted and what decisions might be needed to take one there.

The primary purpose of the study is one of mutual education: for the students who are, or will become, professionals in landscape architecture, architecture, urban planning and design; and for the people of the Padova region who bear the responsibility for developing their own policies and designs and who may benefit from insights and ideas developed by the students.